


Executive Assassin

by DarkAthena (seraphim_grace)



Category: Teen Wolf (TV)
Genre: Darkfic, Depression, Elton John - Freeform, Grief, M/M, Murder, Other, Poisoning, Scrabble, discussions of child abuse, discussions of non/con, i did mention this was an assassin au, implied suicide of a side character, inspired by executive assassin iris, sterek reversebang 2017
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-06-02
Updated: 2017-06-02
Packaged: 2018-11-08 00:41:58
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Rape/Non-Con, Underage
Chapters: 1
Words: 14,423
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11070462
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/seraphim_grace/pseuds/DarkAthena
Summary: The Argent Factory created assistants, everything an executive could want, secretary, assassin, whore - but now one of their high end products is hunting them.





	Executive Assassin

**Author's Note:**

  * For [LadyJaeCee](https://archiveofourown.org/users/LadyJaeCee/gifts).



> This fic is dark! it features discussion of long-term mass child abuse [off screen] non/con [off screen], suicide [off screen] and violence [on screen], put your own welfare first.
> 
>  
> 
> The magnificent art is by LadyJeanClaude [rubyredhoodling@tumblr.com]

 

 

 

The music wakes Derek from a light doze on the couch. He recognizes the song, more from having watched Stiles do this a hundred times than because he knows the artist. Stiles goes into the dojo, the part of the apartment that is entirely his, turns up the music and goes through the motions.

It wasn't the noise that woke him, Derek is used to that, with the dojo doors closed it's distant and quiet, but the changing of the track, the muffled voice that starts the song.

“ _I found a fox caught by dogs, he let me take him in my hands his little heart it beats so fast and I'm ashamed of running away_ ” the woman’s voice is a soaring soprano, dipping and swooping around like a wild bird, and in the middle of the floor, socks on the tatami of his traditional dojo, is Stiles, dressed in traditional training gear, is holding a katana aloft then swinging it down, once for every line in the song. It is a practiced and formal gesture. Then when the tempo changes the movement changes, he steps back and sheathes the sword, then stepping forward unsheathes it in a sweeping blow. Then he repeats it again and again until his muscles know the motion without him having to think about it.

This is what he does, Derek knows, kendo for Kate Bush, aikido to the Pixies, Krav Maga for trance, the artist Derek's never figured out, and if he plays metal then he is practicing with his knives.

He’s made a mix of them all together so he can play, but right now he’s stood in the center of the dojo, facing the sword rack, repeating the same motions over and over as the sound swells into a wall around him. He is wearing traditional gray _hakama_ and an indigo _chihaya_ , with a white arc spray pattern, the sleeves tied up with a crossed over rope and his feet are in brilliant white _tabi_.

Derek could watch him for hours like this.

It’s often easy to forget how dangerous Stiles can be, but seeing him like this, like something out of a samurai movie practicing kendo as a form of meditation to help him get out of his own head Derek sees flashes of it.

He’s seen Stiles roll up tatami matting, the old ones from the dojo floor, and, using the same movements he’s doing so carefully here, slice through them. “A tied tatami," he said in bed once, “has the same density as a human body,” he was walking his fingers up and down Derek's sternum, the moonlight falling through the wall of bulletproof glass in their penthouse apartment catching on his eyes, “they used to measure the strength of a sword by how many tatami rolled tightly it could cut through. They would stack them between wooden posts and a skilled _kendoka_ would do a single downward strike and they’d see how deep the cut would go. The more tatami a sword could cut through the finer the construction.”

“Your _bizen den tachi_ ," Derek had asked, referring to the sword that Stiles used, the one Peter had left for him, “how many did it cut through?” Derek's uncle had bought the sword as a status symbol, spending money just because he could. It had been that habit that had destroyed him. No one had expected it to be able to do more than hanging on the wall.

Stiles had just grinned in the darkness, licking his lips, “Enough," he said. Derek didn't like the darker parts of what Stiles did for him, the things that were necessary to keep him safe, so Stiles didn't talk about them.

As the song ends Stiles steps forward and places the sword on the rack, and lifts the two _escrima_ sticks he had placed before it, by the time the next song starts, with a soaring high note that swoops and dives, he's back in position and moving through the _kata_ of his aikido.

The _escrima_ sticks are new, he's still learning the discipline. He’s broken three pairs already, including one on what might have been an opportunistic mugger. Derek runs one of the largest companies in the world - even a mugging might not be that simple. Stiles is his executive assistant. He is bodyguard, lover, and manager all in one, but he is also an assassin.

He is what they made him in the Factory.

When he sees Derek he flashes him a grin, as the man sings “ _With your feet in the air and your head on the ground try this trick and spin it, yeah_ ” as he moves with a surprising liquidity, like a superhero in a comic.

A move goes wrong and he brings his _escrima_ stick down hard on his thigh with a heavy thud, followed by a curse and the two sticks go flying, before he starts rubbing the offending area with a muttered curse.

He steps forward and flows into yoga, stretching out to finish his workout. Starting with a backbend, stretching his arms out as he spreads the muscles of his chest, then bending down in a fluid motion to a full forward bend, then jumping back into plank, upwards facing dog, downwards facing dog, then jumping forwards into the full forward bend again. He repeats this six times before he finishes.

He flows like water; bending and twisting into the warrior poses, double angle pose, the muscles of his back twisting and straining the fabric of his _chihaya_ and Derek wants nothing more than to pin him to the mat, which he can only do if Stiles lets him, and unpeel him from the layers of linen, undoing the laces at his waist and folding down the fall of his _hakama_ , pushing open the overlapping fabric of the collar, and sucking marks on the skin there.

Stiles is never more appealing to Derek than when he’s hot and sweaty; when the skin under his arms feels almost tropical; when his skin is almost slick so the skin of his pelvic bowl is almost tacky. Like that- he is closest to the Fox that they made him.

During the day Stiles is the perfect assistant, cool and efficient, predicting Derek's needs and filling them before he knows it needs to be done. Between him and Danielle, Derek's secretary, very few of the small concerns of the business bother him.

Beside him, in bed, Stiles is a voracious and playful lover.

At his side, Stiles is both sword and shield. All of the parts of him seem to contradict but form a perfect whole; fighting so hard against how they trained him; trying to be what they denied him and fighting against everything he is.

He is mercurial, becoming whatever he needs to be to serve Derek.

Derek has offered a hundred, a thousand, a million times, to relieve him of the burden and every time Stiles just laughs and presses his fingers to Derek's lips as if to wipe away the question.

Derek owns Stiles, but often he feels that it is the other way around. He is drawn to Stiles like a magnetic pole; like Stiles is a drug that he needs.

It is hard to reconcile the man who will cut down a threat and only complain about the dry cleaning, and the man who perches on Derek's desk and parts his legs in his perfect bespoke suits and pulls Derek's tie between his fingers, drawing him in for a kiss. Then there is the figure carrying the trays of tea, who makes impeccable notes, who can just as quickly pull a knife from his sleeve and skewer a potential threat. He is a study in contradictions and Derek loves them all.

Stiles pulls himself out of the last position, shaking out his limbs, “how long were you watching me?” he asks.

“Since the "Hounds of Love',” Derek tells him.

Stiles’ grin is flashfire thing- like a sky split by lightning. “So you saw me mess up with the _escrima_ ," he scrubs his hand over his hair.

"I don't know why you are so determined to learn to use them.”

“They are wooden," Stiles shrugs, stepping into the space between Derek’s legs, “airport security.” Stiles lets Derek pull him tight against him, “I don't like leaving you unprotected.”

“You protect me," Derek says and it's entirely true.

Stiles just laughs and lets Derek bury his face into his neck, his own fingers curling into Derek's dark hair.

 

—

 

Stiles is humming under his breath, he’s hacked their radios so it is now playing a local radio station. It’s a known glitch of the brand that they are using, so they’re so busy trying to stop it playing easy listening that they’re not looking for him.

He’s in the shadows, watching them, the guards maintaining the perimeter are isolated by the music of the Bee Gees and the steady reassurance someone is going to fix it. They’re not clever enough to think to work in pairs whilst it's broken. He sighs over the state of goons, they’ve gone down in quality, even as little as two years ago people paid for a better quality of henchmen, none of these people are ex-military, just the local meatheads armed and poured into cheap suits. It's almost too easy.

He has their radio feed in his ear, both the music and their attempts to communicate with each other, whilst Danny hacks their feed, putting their surveillance spots on his HUD. He’s wearing a dark grey Nomex weave body suit with hood and there is a Heads Up Display projected on his safety glasses, showing enemy placements on a map.

It's the sort of tech that is years ahead of what the military have, it's the very pinnacle of Hale R&D. He is armed, two pistols, one on each thigh, both with a suppressor. The one on his left is armed with tranquilisers, for dogs or random people who get in the way, the one on the right is safety rounds. The name is something of a misnomer, they’re just as dangerous, but they cut down on collateral damage when furniture and sheet-rock stop them. He doesn't want to hurt anyone not involved with the Factory, but he will do what he must to keep Derek safe.

The music starts again, the local DJ fading out, “ _don't wish it away, don't look at it like it's forever_ ," Stiles grins in the darkness under his mask, “looks like they’re playing my song.” The guard's forehead explodes with pfft noise as Stiles hums under his breath watching the man collapse in on himself, before coming out of the shadows he had fired from.

—

 

Stiles stands at the desk, singing under his breath as he arranges the files for Derek to work on, “ _and I guess that’s why they call it the blues_ ,” he sings, rolling his shoulders in a minimised stretch, “ _time on my hands, could be time spent with you_ ,” satisfied with his work he notices Derek stood in the doorway, “ _time on my hands, could be time spent with you_ ,” he repeats the line with a flourish towards him, “ _laughing like children_ ,”

“ _Living like lovers_?" Derek finishes the line in a flat almost bored monotone, “I take it you finished last night without any hiccups?”

“ _Rolling like thunder, under the covers, so I guess that’s why they call it the blues_ ," Stiles doesn’t bother with such niceties as tune but he is so earnest that even though it's half seven in the morning, even though he must have stepped off a red-eye an hour ago and come straight to Hale, to Derek's office, he seems ebullient and is singing Elton John with gusto.

“Fight music?” Derek asked. Stiles rebelled in the strangest ways, fighting his upbringing and training, and the music was one of those.

“It was on the radio, how could I not?” Stiles keeps no secrets from Derek. He never has.

All that Stiles is, is Derek's, all that was he, all that he might become. He belongs to Derek and he seems to enjoy it. He has a wiggle in his walk, a self-satisfied exhaustion in his face when he brings over Derek's breakfast, an egg white omelet with _salsa verde_ , freshly squeezed mango juice and a pair of fat pork sausages, bloated from frying. Stiles has a few pieces of wholemeal toast, slathered with butter, which he eats perched against Derek's desk, brushing the crumbs from his wool and silk vest. “I take it everything is in place for today’s meeting,”

“When is it not? I wouldn't be a very good assistant if I couldn't put things in place.” Stiles takes a solid bite from his toast, chewing slowly, “are you worried about me?” there's a joke in his voice, “how precious,” his tongue flicks out to lick the crumbs from his lips.

“I'd be lost without you," although his tone is flip Derek knows absolutely how true it is. "I’m more worried because of who the meeting is with.”

Stiles shrugs, “you think because you're trying to intimidate the people who created the Factory that trained me I might do something that puts this plan in jeopardy?” Stiles sucks the last crumbs of his toast from his fingertips, finishing each movement with a lewd pop.

“I’m worried for you," Derek says, then takes Stiles’ hand, his fingers still shining wet from his spit.

Derek has been there on the dark nights, when Stiles wakes up and folds himself up like a piece of paper, knees to his chin with his arms around his shins, a black depression clutching him tightly and his face shining with tears but he makes no noise, and Derek has no idea how long he lies awake until Derek is woken by his shuddering, and doesn’t say anything, just wraps himself around him like a blanket until the rigidity leaves his muscles and he eases back into sleep.

The next day at work it's like it never happened- if perhaps his humor is darker, and his jibes a little crueller.

“Derek," Stiles uses his other hand to cup Derek's jaw, lifting it for a kiss that he dips in to give him, slipping his tongue into Derek's mouth,  "I’m fine. I will be fine. You can trust me to do this.”

He presses his forehead against Derek's close enough they seem to be sharing breath, his hand on Derek's arm, close enough to pull him near. “Get some sleep," Derek tells him, and pulls away, looking at the papers Stiles has put on his desk. “I trust you.”

 

—

 

Derek inherited Stiles from his uncle. He had been a spitting, snarling thing of barely sixteen, hunched over food and rejecting all kindnesses offered. He stole knives and slept with them clenched in his fist.

Derek had been at college when it happened.

He came home for the holidays to something more akin to a gremlin than a teenager sitting at the dining room table, watching everyone with narrow eyes, refusing Laura’s kindnesses, back when she still around to offer them.

“This is Stiles,” Peter had said, standing at the kitchen counter, and pouring himself coffee. “He's the Factory’s apology for Violet. They gave me him and a sword.”

“Supposed to kill me with it," Stiles muttered into his breakfast, hunched over it like he was terrified someone would take it from him.

Peter offered him a banana and he had snatched it from him clutching it to his chest.

Even then Stiles had been beautiful. He had large whiskey colored eyes and a soft pink mouth, with an upturn to his nose like an angel had pressed his finger there. His hair was buzzed to his head, and there was a cut there that would become a scar. He was wearing Derek’s old clothes, the ones from high school that he had outgrown. Derek hadn't known if it was because he was so new to their family or because Peter didn't trust to take him shopping and would never deign to put anyone in clothes that came in packets from Walmart.

The truth of it was a tragedy of its own.

When Peter had risen, by merit- not nepotism- to the position of CFO of Hale Industries- his education and natural disposition for scheming to aid him in his ladder climbing - he had spent his bonus check on an “Assistant” from the Factory. He was aware of them being shady, but Hale industries were on the level, as much as a business of that size could be, and that the Factory had ties to organised crime but he had justified it in his own head, and from their selection - Peter had said that they had lined the graduates up in their uniforms, each holding a clipboard with their attributes and skills, in the cold winter yard and he had picked Violet.

She had been the youngest, stood there in the yard with her arms about herself shivering as it started to snow, and her trainer had been effusive in his praise of her. So Peter bought her, took her back to California and made her a part of the family.

Less than a week later their family home burned and the family with it. Laura and Derek were in college, Peter on his way home from the office, the firefighters claimed Violet had stood on the lawn, her skirt on fire, and laughed and laughed as she burned.

She died later in hospital, one of the eleven victims of the Hale House fire.

The Factory was apologetic. They didn't know what happened they said. This had never happened before in their long history they said. Let us make it up to you they said. Reparations they said. They said a lot of things in those first few weeks after the fire.

Stiles was their reparation- this wild kid who was fierce and determined and independent but scared to leave Peter, especially in those first few weeks.

He and Derek had, over the course of that first year, struck up a friendship, then more. Everything Derek had done he had checked and double checked consent for, from their first kiss, to the first time Stiles tumbled him into his bed and rutted up against him.

When Peter left the office but didn’t make it home, the victim of an accident on the highway, Stiles started to talk. He climbed into Derek's bed the night of the funeral, seeming smaller than his six-foot frame. He’d put on weight since he came into the household and he would always be lithe, but he’d lost that ascetic wiry look he’d had at first. He had slept in the wardrobe, curled up with his blanket with the door wedged shut, but that night he had left his sanctum and crossed the hall into Derek's room, slithering into his bed.

That was the first time that they had slept together, they'd been fucking for months, but that was the first time that they slept, Stiles curled into a ball so tight he barely took up any of the mattress but facing Derek, with Derek’s hand on his arm, the only part of him exposed.

The next day it was like nothing had happened.

 

—

 

Stiles loves Hong Kong, he loves the sauna sweat heat of it, complete with the smells of too many people crammed into too tight a space with the warm, almost rank smell from the breeze off the harbour, and that first breath when he steps off the plane where the heat and the smell hit in the face like opening an oven door, before it quickly becomes invisible. He rolls his shoulders, cramped from hours on the jet, because no matter how wonderful the accommodations, it’s still a plane with all the usual complications of long haul flights. It's better than flying coach.

Hong Kong is the sort of city where it’s easy to lose yourself.

Anything you want is available for a price, and Stiles has money to burn.

Stiles likes the remaining wildernesses of Hong Kong, those parts where the people cram themselves in and do their best to live despite their corporate overlords and the crime redolent in such spaces. It is so very human, unlike the plastic artifices of LA and the pretentious pomposity of New York. Those cities are about how other people see you, but cities like Hong Kong are about how you see yourself.

You can be anyone you want in Hong Kong, even who you truly are.

He checks himself into a hotel intending to nap, but worries he won't be able to, too keyed up for what is coming, but he knows if he puts on his headset and bothers Danny he’ll just hang up on him.

He showers and throws himself on the giant bed, even singles feel too big without Derek there, but he understands why Danielle always books him suites equal to his position. The Factory cannot use the law against him for his actions because they are far more illegal than he, but that doesn't mean they won't use it’s loopholes - if he stays in expensive hotels- in expensive rooms- then it is not so obvious why Stiles is in Hong Kong.

He puts on the radio, a satellite one, and tunes it into an easy listening station called Smooth and falls asleep to Kenny Rogers and Dolly Parton singing about Islands in the Stream.

 

—

 

Derek wakes to the loud thud thud thud of bare fists against the punching bag that Stiles has hooked to the ceiling in their small apartment. He squints at the alarm clock on the bedside cabinet, having to pull his arm from over his face to do so. It is nearly 4 am.

“Stiles," he grumbles into his pillow, “come back to bed.”

“I can't sleep," Stiles says turning, he rolls his shoulders, bouncing on the pads of his feet, Derek looks across at him, Stiles is wearing only a pair of cotton jockey shorts.

“Don’t have to be up yet,” Derek grumbles.

“Then go back to sleep," Stiles tells him, “I just have too much energy, I wanted to try and work some of it off, I didn't mean to wake you.”

It is a truth between them that Derek sleeps like a dead thing, it had been a long time since anything that Stiles has done in those hours has woken him.

Stiles has, in the four years that Derek has known him, never slept well. Derek makes an unhappy noise suggesting that he is awake now, and sleep is a happy memory, but not a thing he will easily revisit.

“Want me to make some coffee?” Stiles asks him, in the light of the desk lamp the sweat on his skin makes him look like he is haloed by gold, since coming to the university he has allowed his hair to grow and he has a patchy beard, still being too young to grow one that is full.

“Shave," Derek growls, rolling onto his back with his arm over his eyes, “you look like Gary from Team America.”

Stiles barks out a laugh, “you love me," he mocks, suggesting that he is this way because of Derek's love.

“You know I do," Derek holds his arms out for Stiles to crawl into his embrace, through the thin coverlet on the rented apartment Derek is using whilst he studied, not wanting to buy anything more spectacular, the word he used, for somewhere he fully expected to almost squat in for the four years of his MBA. It is a nice apartment but it is not the sort of luxury and space that Derek would be expected to have as the heir of a huge multinational corporation.

Stiles climbs in beside him, rearranging his limbs until he has found a cave in Derek's own body, a safe space in the hot, foetid parts of him that he keeps entirely for himself, what he has once jokingly called “a sweetly rotting bed to lie on” like he was making a reference but not one that Derek understood.

Stiles sleeps curled up like a ball, clutching his blanket, a second one that is not draped over the two of them. One of the few things that Derek had gotten from him, after one of his therapy sessions with Marin, a woman who seemed to know more about the Factory than she let on, is that they were bedded down in old pet cages, they would have a pad to lie on, but there was no room to stretch out, and they earned blankets. If they hadn't jumped through every hoop that the Argents put them through that day they wouldn't get one.

So when Stiles slept he still forced himself into a cage too small for him, Derek just curled around him so that even for a moment Stiles might feel safe.

Stiles is like one of those wild animals kept in a tiny cage that is given a huge enclosure but keeps pacing the same small confines, the cage still imprisoning it even after it was physically gone.

Marin was helping but it was taking droplets from an ocean as deep as unknowable as space itself.

“Stiles,” Derek says, voice rough with sleep, and not quite awake, tucking Stiles’ face under his chin, “what would make it easier for you to sleep?”

Stiles is silent for long moments, so long in fact that Derek wonders if he had fallen asleep. “I want to kill them," he said, “I want to kill them all, I want to burn the Factory down, I want to end it, I want them to pay for what they did, to me, to the other Assistants, and the ones that didn't make it in their training, I want to make them pay for what they did to your family, to Peter; to Laura. I want to make them hurt like they hurt me; like they hurt you.”

He shudders into Derek’s embrace, letting Derek turn so they are face to face, their foreheads pressed together so they could breathe each other's breath, still with the warm rankness of sleep curling through it. “I’m not a good person," he admits.

Derek was quiet. The pause stretches for long minutes before he spoke. “You don't need my permission," he says finally, “but you have it, and access to everything I have. Do it," his tone changes, “kill them all, and whatever you need I’ll find it for you, burn them, make them suffer, make them feel it.”

 

—

 

Stiles wakes up cranky, which he supposes bodes well, dresses quickly in his gray Nomex weave skinsuit, and climbing boots, he has a few moments of “I am Batman” before he pulls loose jeans and a hoodie over it to hide his intentions. He straps knives to his forearms and ankles, with thigh holsters under his jeans.

This is the best part of his job, with his skin suit's hood over the hoodie’s so it looks like he’s wearing a hooded tee and his mask around his neck like a scarf. He doesn't look as dangerous as he is.

Finally ready he installs his earwig and hooks it into a pair of heavy rimmed glasses so that Danny can see what he sees. Danny projects his HUD up in his vision.

"Welcome online Fox," Danny says in his ear, his voice like coming home, “are you ready to fuck up shit?” 

Stiles grins into the mirror so Danny can see him, “ _just call me Angel of the morning, angel_ ,”

"I have got to get you some better music," Danny's voice has been judgmental as long as Stiles has known him. Danny was the first of the assistants Stiles liberated from the Factory’s “investors”, and he is his ally in the war against them. Stiles isn't sure that he needs Danny's help, but he's not about to turn it down.

In the six years since Peter’s death Stiles has killed six alumni and freed three, one wanted nothing to do with him or his war, she just wanted out and Derek did everything he could to allow her that freedom, Danny became his eyes in the sky and Lydia was there when he needed her. She’ll find a crows-nest and give him cover with her rifle.

Stiles wasn't sure where this assistant, with the moniker Lily Amaryllis, would fall.

If she wanted to be out he would free her.

If she didn't - he'd kill her, and return to his plush hotel room and sleep without a qualm. The Alumni- and he had no other word for them than that- the assistants who were created by the Factory, had had far too many choices taken from them for Stiles to take one more.

 

Outside the club from which the gang leader works Stiles stops at a street vendor, ordering a bowl of noodles as he watches people go in and out. He always orders the plainest he can, just pork broth, it is something almost all the Alumni share - years of struggling for poor food has left them with delicate stomachs, and if he is going to work he didn't need that problem. He’ll eat something less bland after he has finished.

He enjoys food, but it doesn't agree with him.

He’s never been sure if it was something that the Argents engineered in their product or just a pleasant side effect, after all, it made them much easier to feed.

He watches for a while, talking to Danny as he drinks from a bottle of sports drink that the vendor had, the seal still unbroken, watching them come and go from the club, some stumbling drunk, arm in arm with women, prostitutes most likely, more than one spat out by the bouncers, collapsing on the sidewalk.

When he's satisfied, when the thudding beat of the music reaches an almost unbearable crescendo, he stands up, leaves the vendor a large tip, folded bills that fan open when he places them down, and goes inside.

He moves like a fox when he climbs the stairs to the back office and closes the door behind him as quietly as he opened it, without alerting any of the heavies down the stairs.

What he sees surprises even him.

Everyone inside is dead except Lily Amaryllis, she has slit all of their throats, Stiles can track how it happened, who fell first and by which means she killed them. She is covered in blood, wearing a skin tight spandex dress, covered in artful slits, and her arms are covered in bruises.

"I saw you, Fox," she says, she is talking around the lump in her throat. “I saw you watching.”

“You did this for me?” He asks her.

She scrubs her hands, still holding the two curved knives in them, across the sides of her face. “I did this for me," she corrects him, her face is streaming with tears and her lips were split. "I couldn’t," she starts, “I couldn't,”

“I understand," Stiles said, he makes no move to get closer.

“You beat me," she says, tilting her face, “I was the best, I was the victor, and you beat me.” Stiles wonders if seeing him was the last thread of her sanity. “Then you were gone, and I was still hungry.”

“Lily," he says, "I fought you because they made me, I’ll fight with you if you want me to, or I’ll fight for you, you're free, we’re free, they can't do this any more.”

“You don't know what they did to me?!” she shrieks, she’s tugging at her hair, her eyeliner smeared with tears and blood.

“I know what they did to me," he says.

“THEY SENT ME TO THE WEST WING!” she is shrieking, her voice ululating as she tries to express it, “THEY SENT ME TO THE WEST WING AND THEN THEY SOLD ME TO HIM,” she gestures to the body at the desk, his head almost severed from his neck so deep is the cut in his throat. It's like she sawed back and forth over some time.

Her suede high heels are covered in gore, there is blood splattered up her bare legs. Her hair had been bound up, raised in a bouffant and with a long curl down her back, now she looks wild, her blonde hair almost a halo around her head of frizz.

“They gave me away as a sacrifice," he tells her, “giving me to the people who killed Violet with a sword to kill me with, you are not alone in hating them, Lily.”

“THAT IS NOT MY NAME,” she bellows it out, spittle flying from her lips, “MY NAME IS ERICA.”

“Erica," Stiles tries, quietly, patiently, to calm her, he doesn't want to fight her. “I’m sorry, I didn't know it before now, hello, Erica, my name is Stiles.”

"I know who you are," she hisses it out, “the one who got away; The Fox; the one who is trying to burn them out; the one who has Gerard running scared; how are you any better than them?”

"I’m not,” Stiles answers, "I’m what they made me.” He spreads his hands, letting her see the hilts of the knives on his arms, “I came here to do this," he spreads his hands again to show the bodies and the splatter up the walls, “I wanted to do that," he gestures with his head at the body sat at the desk, “I was going to do that to the man who sold the ones sent to the West Wing, I don't think I would have been so merciful.”

Erica laughs, it's a high broken sound that might at any moment devolve into tears, “Get out," she says, “get out get out get out get out get out get out!” she has her fists pressed to her temples as she bends down, knees together, “don't look at me, don't look, don't look.”

He tries to say her name but she throws one of the knives at him, it clatters uselessly at the wall beside his head, “go NOW!”

He goes, closing the door behind him, and he’s maybe three steps away when he hears the end of it, the pop of a single gunshot.

He doesn't look back.

—

 

When he had returned to the Factory the first thing he did was torch the West Wing, he cleared it out; gathered the kids and took them somewhere safe- somewhere far from where Gerard could reach them. The East Wing was where they were taught to fight, turned against each other, made to fight each other for food, and the winner was rewarded with all that they could eat in full view of the others and those who didn’t went hungry. There was nothing for losers.

Lily, no Erica, had been the champion for weeks when Stiles was training, then one day the rumble in his belly grew too much and he took to the ring, as he did every day, challenging her this time - expecting to lose, but that day he won.

It was the day that everything changed.

With his belly full of rice and beans, washed down with thin watery green tea, the tea they used, cold and in chipped cups, in their training, they sent him to the North Wing.

There were three arms of the factory: the brothel of the West Wing where the failed children were sold as whores and concubines; the East Wing where they learned and were beaten and pitted against each other; and the North Wing where the teachers lived.

After that day he was thrown into the bowels of the North Wing- chained when every day Kate: dreadful, beautiful, terrible, lovely Kate, came to him.

Derek had asked him why, why did they give Stiles to Peter to kill instead of killing him themselves, instead of giving him to some arms dealer, or potentate. Stiles had grinned his vulpine grin and said “they couldn't let it get out, we were many and they were few, I did something so terrible that I had to be broken, but I would not break," he had reached out and cupped Derek's cheek, “I spat in their faces when they broke my bones, I laughed when they hurt me,” he had pinned Derek to the bed, thighs on either side of Derek’s waist.

“I became something else under Kate’s hands, I am what she made me, but I remained the product that killed the person who managed the Factory, I was too dangerous to be let out- to dangerous to kill, not because of who I was, but because I had killed one of them, because I, just to survive, killed one of them, because I used their training, I used what they taught me to kill Alexander Argent when I was still under their control.”

He had burned it all to the ground.

He would do the same for Erica.

“Fox?” Danny asks in his earwig, “Fox, sit-rep.”

"I’m fine," he answers, “I’ll be fine, you know that," he says, “how about a little music, something to sing along to.”

“Fox?” Danny is worried about him, he can hear it in his voice, Danny is his comforting angel on his shoulder, even if he was named for the devil. “I’ll arrange the jet to swing by and pick you up in the morning, I’ll let Hale know you're coming back early.”

“Iblis," Stiles used the old name, the Argent name, the one they used in case people were listening in, "I’m fine, you won't need to tuck me up in bed with hot milk and cuddles, just put on some music,” he takes a deep breath. He pauses, “just put on some fucking music.”

Danny is quiet for a few moments before Stiles head the click and the bassline started, dum dum dum dum dum dum der der dum, the sort of bassline that felt like it crawled into your skin and made your heart beat along to it, “ _I can't seem to face up to the facts_ ," the man sings, “ _I’m tense and nervous and I can't relax,_ ” it fits his mood so perfectly Stiles wonders if Danny really does live inside his head, _"I can't sleep because my bed’s on fire, don’t touch me I’m a real live wire. Psycho killer, qu’est que c’est_?”

 

—

 

Derek stumbles into the kitchen, his sweats low slung on his hips and his wifebeater rucked up where he's scratching at his stomach.

There are four world class assassins sitting at the kitchen table playing scrabble.

It's not even the strangest part of his day.

Derek recognizes three of them, none of which have their backs to the windows or door, and are drinking something, he doesn't recognise what but it's probably not alcoholic, and there are individual bowls of popcorn and m&ms, but there is just as much of each on the board. There is a dictionary being brandished by Lydia - Banshee - as she tries to explain that discrete and discreet are entirely different words and that the double word score is entirely legitimate from the word scree.

He mumbles something fond into Stiles' hair as he places a kiss there.

“Hey," Stiles curls his hand up around his head to cup Derek's face and turns into the kiss, so the second one falls on his temple, “this is Boyd, he’s the new hire in security,” he says, “and he is currently totally kicking our asses.”

“I still say he’s cheating,” Danny says, throwing a kernel of popcorn at Boyd. Boyd is the biggest person in the room, and Derek is not small, he must stand six three and is built like a TV wrestler, with biceps large enough they look like they could crack walnuts by bending his arm. He has his hair cut almost to the scalp, with tired eyes and a pillowed mouth. He has a softness to his face the others do not.

Danny is handsome, high sharp cheekbones and a jaw that could be used to square a wardrobe, his black eyes are sharp and assessing and his mouth is a sharp line.

Lydia looks like a doll, large brownish-green eyes, and a large, painted mouth in an oval face, with long red hair she keeps tied back neatly. She is much smaller than the others, wearing a massively oversized sweatshirt that she has belted at her waist and hangs long enough to be considered a dress because she is tiny, but she fills a room.

Boyd raises an eyebrow of calm amusement before he puts down his tiles turning Lydia’s “discrete” into “indiscrete”.

“You son of a bitch," Stiles hisses, but there is no heat in it, Boyd just takes a drink from his glass and flashes a wicked smirk at him.

“You wanna play?” Lydia asks, turning to him.

Derek looks at the knives on the table, Lydia has a butterfly knife with cut outs in the blade to make it lighter, there is Boyd’s not-quite machete, Stiles _tanto_ , and Danny’s glock feldspaten e-tool. He doesn't believe it will come to blows but the promise of it is there, they might even be gambling for them, Derek doesn't want to ask. “I’m good," he says, “want me to call for take out?” Three of them bristle, the idea of inviting a strange person to the house where Derek might open the door to them assaulting all of their protective instincts, even Boyd whom he doesn't know.

“Yeah, babe, Thai sound good?” Stiles asks the table, “the doorman on the building will bring it up.” With that they relax visibly, Boyd’s hand falling away from the knife on the table before they call out their orders. All of them on the blander side of the menu.

"I’ll get them to bring more soda," Derek tells them, pulling out the bottle of apple juice from the fridge as if this is perfectly normal. Sometimes Derek wonders if he has completely lost his mind, because at some point four assassins playing scrabble at his kitchen table became the norm, most of the time he just appreciates feeling safe.

 

—

 

Yemen was hot in an almost offensive way. The dry heat hitting them in the face like a slap every time you opened a door, like opening an oven, with a hot, dusty breeze that dried the mouth. It was too hot to wear a suit but too important to go without.

Stiles traveled along with Derek, walking four steps behind as a proper assistant should, carrying his papers, and eschewing the aviator sunglasses that Derek had told him to wear.

They restricted his vision too much.

The street was quiet leading to the Medina, a few large black birds cawing from the safety of the tall walls as they stepped out of the car and began to climb the steps into the building.

The meeting was important, but Stiles had a terrible feeling, Maxim Khouri had used the political instability to set himself up as a force to be reckoned with and Derek did not seem to be taking this as seriously as he should.

The meeting room was a light airy one with four open windows, the air waving the light gossamer curtains, and a pair of heavy dark colored leather couches facing each other. Khouri sat on one, wearing a suit that was just too small for him, sat back with his arms spread across the back, and two bodyguards stood behind him with visible old style earwigs and heavy sunglasses. They looked like a pair of thugs hired from the Matrix movies.

“Mister Hale," Khouri was a man who enjoyed the best of life and it was showing on his face, there was a fine film of sweat, and he had opened his top button although the temperature in the room was strangely cool, there was an oil burner burning something that smelled like Frankincense, and a woman with a haunted expression bought them a large coffee pot with espresso cups, “welcome to my humble home.”

The woman crouched down and poured the coffee quickly, she was shaking and Stiles watched it as Derek went through the formalities with the man. There was only one way this was going to end, unfortunately.

He just had to wait for the order.

He was making notes, using training and Pittman's shorthand to scribble down what Khouri was talking about, most of it was the usual posturing where he gave the impression that he was in a position of power.

Most of Stiles' attention was focussed on Hale. He was watching the room because this was what he had been trained for. Stiles was an alumni of the Factory, trained to be everything that the employer needed, secretary, bodyguard and whore. The bodyguards were watching Khouri for the call to attack, it was clear he intended to threaten violence to get his own way. The woman had scrambled out of the room so fast she was clearly waiting for the inevitable.

Yemen was not a safe country, for years it had exploded into violence, and Khouri had used that instability and violence to gain power, using money to buy more and more thugs, until he managed to afford the Anderson twins behind him.

His posturing caused Derek to lean forward. He did not touch the coffee. Stiles watched for the gesture.

Khouri waved his hand and the two men behind him pulled out a pair of guns as Khouri smiled, it was a sly thing, the sort of thing a man who believed himself in control, who genuinely thought he was the one in control, allowed himself.

Derek made a gesture with his hand and Stiles moved into motion. He flowed like water, disarming both men and with a crack and a yowl one of them had a broken wrist, and fell back, a stomp to a knee had the other laid out. He looked at Derek and then stopped, the two men removed from combat but he wanted Derek's approval before he killed them. Derek shook his head slightly.

“I think we can certainly come to a conclusion about this, Khouri," Derek said leaning forward, “now we have this unpleasantness out of the way.”

“He is,” Khouri was stammering, as Stiles pulled out a plain white card, wiping his thumb through the blood on one of the bodyguard's face, from his broken nose and quickly, with the pad of his thumbs drew a few symbols, a vee, a straight line joining it into a triangle with points, then from the left he smeared a curve around the point of the triangle, forming a stylised fox. He handed the card to Khouri as he took the few steps back across the room to Derek, picking up his tablet and waiting for notes.

“So," Derek said, ignoring Khouri's obvious terror, “shall we go on?”

 

—

 

Stiles went with Derek to college, earning first his Bachelors degree and then his MBA, and he was there when Derek interned at his own company, even when Derek's job was filing and fetching coffee Stiles was his assistant, sometimes knowing ways to make the job easier or more efficient.

He had argued with Derek's professors over business models, and he had stood, barely seventeen, correcting the Dean of the School of Business over dates. He was one month before the age of sixteen when he came into Peter’s care but he was trained already. He took martial arts classes and flirted, he helped Derek with his homework and got his GED for something to do. Whilst Derek learned about fiscal annuities and other strangely named things Stiles sprawled on the double bed of their apartment and read issues of Detective Comics.

When Derek joined a study group Stiles gave him background checks on them, and encouraged one of the students, one who flirted aggressively with Derek, to leave; Stiles never said why, but she transferred schools later that week.

When Derek took Stiles to a local band, a bar full of college age kids drinking beer and aggressively swaying to the beat Stiles bristled through the whole experience like a cat.

In the car in the way home, with their driver Jordan up front, the glass down, “did you enjoy the show?” Derek asked.

“Too many people, not safe," Stiles answered him, his hands were shaking but he was doing his best to hide it.

“But you like music so much," Derek said, pulling Stiles into the hollow of his armpit so he was spread over the back seat, knees bent and the back of Stiles’ head in the curve of Derek's neck, “I thought you'd enjoy it more.”

“I enjoy you," Stiles purred, trying to change the subject. He took Derek's hand in his own and cupped it, running his thumb over Derek's palm in a soothing circle, using Derek's hands to steady his own. “But I don't like people, anyone could hurt you, and I couldn't protect you.”

“You don't need to protect me," Derek said softly, kissing his hair.

“I," Stiles searched for the words in the midst of the sudden overwhelming panic that is clutching at him, “yes," he said through the lump in his throat, "I do.”

“Stiles,” Derek started but Stiles clutched his hand tight enough to hurt.

“Derek, please," he says and then schools his body to release the tension. “Maybe if," he starts, "I hear in Vegas, they have boxes, that will be safer, maybe we can try that.”

“I’m sure we can get tickets for Celine Dion or something," Derek said with an attempt at a laugh.

“I think I'd rather face the crowds at Woodstock," Stiles told him, “you don't think less of me, do you, because I don't like too many people?” Stiles turned his face up for a kiss.

“I don't think I could think less of you if I tried," Derek answered in a light, flip tone, and Stiles laughed, pulling Derek's arm around him.

"I hate you too," he said.

 

—

 

Derek was happy and in love. His belly was full of good food and cold beer. Stiles was beside him, leaning across the table to steal his fries. Both of them were out of place in their designer suits, with the stink of a difficult work day about them, as they drank Czech lager out of old mason jars and ate venison burgers slathered with red onion jam on toasted brioche buns. The restaurant was a Hole in the Wall recommended to Danielle, Derek's secretary, by one of the other assistants in the company. They offered simple food well made at reasonable prices with imported lagers on tap, and Stiles shared kisses with him, tasting of _Staropramen_ and sweet chutney, sharp cheese and home fries in a batter made with a sweet ale.

Derek hadn't minded leaving a hundred dollar tip, putting two fifty dollar bills into the jar, happy that they had more than earned it, and only lamenting that he had no more cash on him, even after taking the fifty from Stiles, who added the few notes he had in his pockets, and coins, in the jar whilst gushing about the burgers because they had been _that_ good.

They were walking down the street, arm in arm, the meal being an excellent cap to a terrible day, and Stiles was feeling playful, pinching Derek's ass just to watch him jump, his laughter a bright peal in the New York night.

Music drifted down from an open window, playing eighties hits and Derek had never felt so in love as he did that night.

Which meant, of course, that someone had to ruin it. The mugger came out of a dark alleyway, holding a knife, brandishing it, he had a weird twitch, and a hood pulled up to try and cover his face.

"Oh for fuck's sake," Stiles said, rolling his eyes, “I can't have one night, can I?”

“Gimme your wallet and watches,”

“Spectacles and testicles too?” Stiles muttered, the music above him was Stevie Nicks, and he almost waited for the chorus, before flicking out his nightstick. For once Stiles wasn't wearing a gun, although he had a concealed carry permit, but he didn't need a gun to be lethal.

It was like someone had flicked a switch, and the playful, almost clumsy young man became the lethal Fox. His entire posture changed, one foot pointed forward and the other behind him at an angle of forty five degrees.

"Just gimme your watches, man," the mugger was almost wheedling, two dark shadows appearing behind him, “this don't need to be complicated, just gimme, and it’ll be done.”

Stiles grinned, his mouth suddenly looking like it was too full of teeth. “ _Just like the white winged dove,_ " he flowed into motion, striking the first man's arm hard with an almighty crack “ _Sings a song,_ " crack, “ _Sounds like she's singing_ ,” crack, “ _Ooo_ ,” crack, “ _ooo_ ,” crack, “ _ooo_ ”.

The chorus over Stiles stepped back and looked at the three men groaning in the alley way. “Was it really worth it?” he asked, “now you've gone and ruined my nice evening,” he had his foot on the shoulder of one of the men holding him down. “And now we have to wait for the police, give statements, etc, this is an almighty bore, but this public, we have to obey the niceties, don't we, Derek?” The one mugger who had the ability to scrabbled to his feet and ran off into the alleyway.

Derek agreed that they did.

“And I’m going to have that damn song in my head all damn night," he said, “so I hope you've damn well learned your lesson,” he leaned down, “have you learned your lessons, or do I need to teach it again?” He hefted the nightstick in his hand, the mugger he was stood on, groaned, his jaw broken, “and even better look there," Stiles pointed out the three cameras facing the alleyway, “and there,” an ATM machine, which was probably why they had chosen the spot that they had. “It's all been filmed, this whole thing will be on Youtube by morning.”

The police wailed up beside them, sirens blaring and lights flashing. The car stopping by them at an angle and the two officers spilling out, Stiles raised his hands, “oh thank god," he said, “officers, these men attacked us.”

Stiles had no reason to lie, as he had said to the muggers everything was on camera.

 

—

 

Lydia enjoys numbers, so Stiles finds her a job in Hale's forensic accounting team, she started, as all of the Assistants Hale hires, at the bottom and worked her way up by being horrifyingly efficient and good at her job. She dresses for the job, but instead of high heels, which she refuses to wear, she wears Chinese style embroidered pumps, with the peonies patterned to match her lipstick. She wears white silk blouses with high waisted black pencil skirts, and black kitten ties. Her hair is always in the same distinctive style, caught in an inch of braid at the back of her head, a back-combed rise that the braid is pinned into and then a tail.

Half of the men in the office are in love with her, in the way that people admire statues and landscapes, as something beautiful that is not to be touched.

She wears black stockings with lace toppers and a black line down her calf, and sometimes, when she moves, it is possible to see her suspender belt.

“Walk with me," she tells Derek, with Stiles abroad she has taken over Derek’s protection detail. She moves numbers around on her tablet and sucks on hard candies as she does so. When she stands up for a moment he sees the indigo of her tattoo through her shirt, then the flash is gone.

Derek has seen it, she has a full back tattoo of a snake and willow pattern, something her previous owner insisted for her. Like any decorative item, the quality of the work was as much an act of conspicuous consumption as the original purchase. She doesn't even notice it any more.

Derek knows there's an office pool about what it is, and if it didn't amuse her Derek would have it shut down.

She had pulled her loose dress up over her head and stood there in just her panties, her arm over her breasts as she offered herself to him. She had thought it was expected, when Stiles tried to explain she mentioned a threesome and Stiles had looked at Derek as if to say it was his decision, even whilst Derek had scrabbled about looking for something to cover her with.

Danny hadn’t offered sex, he’d just taken control of the Hale network as if he was born to it.

Lydia walks Derek to the elevator, he has a private one in his office that he has used for sex more than once. Stiles, for all that he is ruthless and cold, can be soft and sweet.

“I did the research you asked," she says as the elevator starts its descent with a lurch. “I wanted to wait until Stiles was out of the country before I shared it with you.” She worries her lip with her teeth, white against the harsh blood red gloss she wears. “I didn't know if you wanted it as a folder, or you wanted a breakdown.”

Derek thinks about it, he rolls his shoulders a little, he has a tendency to hunch over when he’s tired and frustrated and Stiles nags him about it because it makes his shoulders tight and sore and gives him headaches.

“Give me the breakdown and send the files to my tablet.” Stiles doesn't go into Derek's tablet at all, he never has and insists that he won’t, that he has no need to.

“I suppose the best place to start," she says, “is what I knew personally, Stiles was older than the rest of us when he was brought to the factory, not by much, he was seven or eight, most of us were closer to four, and he started at the very bottom rung, where the new kids started. He was adamant his father would come for him and save us all, that we didn’t have to give in, that his dad was the best deputy in the world and he would save us all. That gave me a place to start.”

She paused before she continued, “Deputy Stilinski was a very good deputy," she said, “it started pretty normally for these things, the local conglomerate pushing its luck with local law enforcement, slam dunk cases that were dismissed in the DA’s office, just enough to get him to look into corruption, and it was the first thread.

“The Argents were using the area for something, I didn't look too much into it, but it involved that conglomerate and they had associations with the _yakuza_ who threatened deputy Stilinski, telling him to back off. You know how those stories go, this one was no different. Mrs Stilinski, Stiles’ mom, was sick, a brain disease, and Deputy Stilinski was like a dog with a bone, he couldn't let it go, and just kept picking.

“Then one day they took his son. He pushed it up the ladder into the FBI, his son's best friend's dad happened to work out of the local field office and the thread started to get pulled, and he started to tear the world apart looking for his son. Clearly taking Stiles had been a mistake, they thought it would make him stop.”

“It wouldn't have stopped me," Derek states.

“They probably promised to bring him back, they wouldn't have, but they probably told him that they would," Lydia says.

“It went high level and then Deputy Stilinski, almost bankrupt from medical bills over his wife, because suddenly his insurance didn't cover it,” that was another instance of the Argent reach, “some weird computer glitch, they fixed it - eventually.” She lets out a deep breath through her nose. “Then one day, on his way back from the hospital, there was an accident, a black SUV came out of nowhere, blindsided him, the FBI’s agent's son was in the back, they both died on impact. The FBI wrapped up the investigation within the next two months.”

“So his father never stopped looking for him.” It is not a question. He states it so she can confirm it.

Lydia's smile is sweet and sad, “no, they took Stiles to make him stop, or that’s the lie they told themselves, I imagine the local thugs took him to blackmail him, and the Argents saw a possibility, a healthy active boy- he was perfect for the Factory. Or maybe his father was already dead when they brought him there. Stiles stopped asking eventually.”

Derek sighs, opening the door for Lydia, “thanks for looking into this for me," he tells her.

"I had flowers sent- to their graves- his mother died not long after his dad," she says, “she didn't seem to know that he was gone, it was a mercy I suppose.”

Derek corrects her, “we both know there are no mercies in this world, but make sure that the graves are attended.”

“Are you going to tell him?” Lydia asks.

Derek considers it for long moments before he spoke, opening the door to the street outside and letting her pass through first, the lobby of the Hale building is light and open, with a wall of glass and a girl sits at the front desk with a head set, deflecting calls throughout the building, they are people walking about outside, and a few manicured trees. “If he asks," Derek says finally, “he’s never asked about his father, but if he does, I want to be the one to tell him. I worry about him.”

“He’s a wetwork specialist with a talent for mental manipulation trained by the Factory, if either of you are prepared for hyper-vigilance it will be him," she says as they walk to the food-cart outside the building. It sells a wonderful cup of coffee and Derek likes to visit it at least once a day. He's offered the man who runs the cart a place in the building but he says he likes the New York sunshine.

Derek places in an order for a pretzel to go with his coffee, it's strong and black and without the froths and syrups and hot milk and cold milk and soy milk that makes it stressful for him to order coffee. Stiles likes the ones layered with caramel and cream, but they upset his stomach so he has them rarely.

“Don't let him catch you eating that," Lydia says, her own pretzel wrapped in paper. Stiles worries over Derek's diet much more than his own, and pretzels are salt and carbohydrates and too many of them earn him a nagging.

“He snap chatted me a picture of a bratwurst coiled sausage in an entire loaf of rye bread with the tag “yum”, I think I can sneak a pretzel.”

 

—

 

The party was in an old warehouse, repurposed with flashing laser lights and a wall showing random images, the gay scene in Berlin was jumping, and Stiles ignored the hands that sometimes lingered across his ass in his eighties rocker pants, he was sure Lydia had stolen them from the set wardrobe of Grease, they were skin tight and black, with a pair of Russian army boots and a loose vest tee with an album design for Fugazi on the front and the back slashed into strips. He was wearing several studded belts around his hips, and leather cuffs on his hips, with thick black eyeshadow and his hair slicked back. He wore a velvet dog collar with a tag that read, for those who got close enough to read it “property of Derek Hale”.

He was with Danny who was more sedately dressed in jeans and a velvet blazer, with nothing underneath it.

They were not the ones in clothes so fabulous that they drew every eye but were in fact, almost invisible in the crowd, even as they danced to the pounding beat, Danny with his hand in the small of Stiles' back pressing them close together as they looked around the room with hard, cold eyes.

“Do you see him?” Danny asked, almost shouting in his ear.

“Main podium," Stiles answered, “to the left of the DJ, in the shadows, white shirt.”

The Assistant was handsome, for the Factory had never turned out someone who was not striking or beautiful, tall and slim with a head of blonde curls and a jaw like Michelangelo's David. Stiles recognised him and knew that his code name was, ironically perhaps, Archangel.

He had a louche looseness, watching over his owner, where he sprawled across a leather couch with two boys draped over him, drinking champagne, and one of them placed a paper tab of something on the owner's tongue as Stiles watched.

The owner wasn't a threat, just a young corporate asshole who used his father’s company to promote Argent interests, even if he didn't know that’s what he was doing.

They had intended to use Hale the same way.

This company was using the cheap manufacture of clothes to fund sweatshops, those sweatshops were being used as cover for the Argent sex trafficking, those who didn't finish as Assistants were sold into sexual slavery, or given to those who weren't powerful enough, or influential enough to warrant a full assistant.

Archangel was one of those.

Stiles was here to offer him what might be the very first choice of his life. It didn't mean he’d take it.

Stiles was better at combat, Danny could wipe out a company with a press of a key, Lydia could pick the fleas off a dog at a hundred yards with her rifle, but an alley with a pair of knives - that was Stiles’ specialty.

When Archangel stepped outside, Stiles followed him, fumbling at his pants as if looking for a pack of cigarettes, then dropped to his boots and pulled out his knives. They were black, with metal handles bored through with holes to make them lighter and better for throwing.

“Did you really think I wouldn't recognize you, Fox?” years in the Factory had never taken from him his English accent and years in Germany had polished it so he sounded like he was enunciating in a Bond movie.

“I hoped you would, it would make this easier," Stiles rolled his shoulders to loosen up. “We don't have to do this,” he said, “we can go to a Biergarten and discuss your options.”

“I can’t leave my sponsor unattended for so long,” Archangel said, taking the knives from his sleeves.

“He's unconscious on the couch and you know I had nothing to do with that,” Stiles said, “you were the goal here, not him.”

“Cocaine, champagne, and hookers take a lot of him," Archangel said, “but he’s still my sponsor, you know what it's like. Your sponsor sent you here, didn't he?”

"I don't have a sponsor," Stiles told him and watched the way Archangel reacted to the information, "I have an employer, and he's willing to offer you a job too, you just,” he paused, “walk away.”

“It’s not that simple,” there was a tremor in Archangel’s voice.

“Yes,” Stiles said, “it is, I’m going to tear down the Factory, with or without you, and right now you’ve got a choice, leave your sponsor on his couch with his hangover, hell call the cops on him, he’s a minor player and he was an insult to your training, some petty rich kid who’s more interested in getting off than doing his job, so the Argents damn near run his company.”

“He's getting married,” Archangel said, “to Allison Argent, she’ll be good for the company. She doesn't know about the family business, she thinks it's arms dealing, legal of course. Will you go after her?”

Stiles is silent for a moment, “I’ll have to check your information, if she's not involved, then no, she's not interesting to me, if she is, then I’ll do to her what I did to Kate.” At the mention of Kate Archangel flinches. “I did Kate,” Stiles confirms, “and I didn't make it quick.” It was only fair, he thought, she had never made it quick either.

"I can't let you, she’s,” Archangel said, and twisted his knives so the points were towards him and his entire stance changed.

“If that’s your decision, we can certainly do this,” Stiles echoed the gesture, “and for the record, I’m sorry.”

“You were never better with knives than I was,” Archangel told him.

“It's been a long time,” Stiles corrected, “things change.”

 

 

When Stiles went back into the club he walked straight to Danny, “it's done,” he said, “let's get out of here.” He took him by the hand, “do you want to fly back tonight? or do you want to wait?”

Danny looked him up and down, “we’ll go back tonight,” he pulled Stiles in for a hug, “we’ll go back to the hotel, shower, get some of that eye makeup off, it's so smudged you look like you should be fighting Captain America right now,” Danny knew what he was doing, trying his best to distract Stiles from what had happened, and the body cooling in the alley.

“You wish," Stiles said, “just so you could pick him up and nurse him back to health.”

“His shoulder to waist ratio is the proof of God being real," Danny wrapped his arm around him, Stiles was always a little more fragile when he felt safe after a kill, “we should take a photo for Derek, show him his little trash panda."

Stiles punched ineffectual at Danny's side, “m’his Fox," he mumbled, “not trash panda.”

“My mistake," Danny was carefully over-enunciating to make it clear he was teasing, “you’re a trash dog-cat.”

 

 

Danny stitched up the gash on Stiles’ ribs when they went back, covering it in antibiotic salve and taping on a square of gauze. Stiles pulled a tee and a hoodie over it and made sure to swing his rucksack on the other shoulder to avoid the slash there.

“How many are left on the list?” he asked as they descended the elevator.

“Two,” Danny said.

“I have a new name for you, Allison Argent is marrying the fuckwit who was sponsoring Archangel,” Stiles screwed up his face, “she was using him, he seemed to think she was innocent, I promised him that if she was, I’d leave her alone.”

Danny nodded, and wrapped his arm around Stiles’ shoulder, “we can do this," he said.

“Whatever it takes," Stiles agreed.

“Whatever it takes.”

 

—

 

Gerard Argent is a pretentious asshole. He spent years training his “assistants" in the art of the Japanese tea ceremony because he believed it to be the height of civilization but never understood the actual meaning of the ceremony.

When he demanded a meeting with Hale, and it was a demand, like he was a king, Derek had refused it. He had made him wait for nearly six months but as the date rolled around Stiles almost fell back into character. He couldn't help it, like a Catholic school girl seeing a nun who found that they could not avoid dropping their gaze, softening their shoulders and templing their hands together between their thighs as if to cover their sex, unaware that they were even doing it, his posture changed and he became cold. He couldn't even be sure why he was doing it.

He has insisted on bringing a small low table and floor cushions into the meeting room, and an entire antique tea set from an artisan in Kyoto and he was aware that he didn't want to, and couldn't do anything about it. He was frustrated at his own inability to avoid doing these things, even though he hated both it and them, to please a man he despised with every part of his being and had, on several occasions attempted to kill.

He pushed himself in the dojo. He rode Derek with his head cast back, almost using him as a sex toy, and then clinging to Derek like a baby monkey, pressing his face into the curve of Derek's neck, and refusing to let him pull his cock out, keeping his knees either side of his hips and clutching his hands, like he was afraid that if he would, if he stopped touching Derek, shatter into dust.

He prepared tea over and over until his hands started to shake in his sleep like he was still whisking it hours after the tea was drunk and gone.

He fussed over Derek's appearance and Derek knew it was stress and fear, but there was nothing to do but wait it out; to have the meeting and move on from it.

When the day came Stiles laid out clothes for Derek, a Jasper Littman in gold tweed, with a vest and single breasted blazer that ended on the hip, rather than the more American style which ended below the ass, with the vest being only a single button higher than the jacket, and a slim collar. He paired it with a white shirt and an apple green floral silk tie, that looked it had been made from silk _chirimen_ , cut from an antique kimono.

Stiles’ own suit was charcoal with the same slim fit and almost antique look, but his tie was black _chirimen_ to match Derek's. He spent the entire morning thinking that he might be sick.

When word came that Gerard and his own personal assistant, he called her Kanaima but she was signed in as Tracy Stewart, were in the lobby Stiles nearly had a panic attack. Tracy was a pretty girl with long dark hair she wore in a braid down her back over her perfect pink grey skirt suit, she had a soft mouth that was slightly open to show her teeth, her face was a pleasing oval with large, almost sad black eyes, and wife almost Nordic cheekbones. She sat almost pulled away from Gerard, who had a presence much larger than his person.

Gerard was a man in his early sixties with a ring of white hair framing a shining bald scalp. He talked like his teeth were too large for his mouth, and words got caught behind them, making sure he enunciated every syllable specifically, and his black eyes were like covetous beads, looking over what he saw.

“Stiles,” Derek said as he walked Gerard across to the small table and dropped into a practised high kneeling in the cushion, one Kanaima repeated, but Gerard fumbled into sitting cross-legged on the cushion, “tea.”

Stiles bowed his head in acknowledgment and went to the tray of tea, taking the kettle, which had been boiling on a small hot plate, and placing it on the tray.

He had done this so many times in the factory, the process repeated over and over with Miss Baccari stood behind them with her white silk blouses and black pencil skirts, just like Lydia preferred, but with strict black Louboutins and her hair in a coif and twist, she had lashed them across the back of the legs with a bamboo cane that felt like fire until they could perform the entire ceremony without so much as the cups jiggling against each other in the tray.

He placed the tray, an antique bamboo one he had sourced with the tea set, kneeling on the pad, and placing out the cups to let the kettle cool, before he poured the water into the pot, adding the matcha tea from the tin.

Peter had told Stiles that people appreciated the Japanese tea ceremony because, by the repetition of careful scripted movements, they formed a direct line to the past that was unbroken, every person who performed a perfect tea ceremony was repeating the same gestures that a person five hundred years before had done. For one perfect summer before Peter had died Stiles had been in Tokyo learning to perform the tea ceremony correctly, not the corruption of it Miss Baccari had scoured the backs of his legs to teach him.

It was a measure of Gerard's pretension that he insisted that all of his trained assistants, every one that went through the Factory could attempt a facsimile of it, but it was incorrect, what Miss Baccari had taught them was economy of movement but Stiles had gone to Japan to learn how to do it perfectly.

He was a snob about tea, which was weird because he rarely drank it.

He poured the tea, whisking each cup until it frothed correctly, and placed the cup before them, starting with Derek and then Gerard, then Kanaima then himself. Kanaima did not surprise him when she swapped her own cup with Gerard’s. Stiles would do the same.

He watched as Gerard took two of the sugar packets from the bowl on the table, ignoring the honey jar and dipper, and tearing them open and dumping them in the tea, and using a spoon, not the tea whisk, stirred the tea, slurping it.

He insisted that the children he took were trained in the art of the tea ceremony and either disregarded it or didn't understand it. Gerard never was the sort of person who believed that rules applied to him.

Stiles, like a good assistant, kept his eyes down until Gerard, talking about something that Stiles was not really listening to addressed him directly.

“You on your knees, Fox, it’s such a pretty sight.” There wasn't a leer involved with the statement, it was more like a threat. Gerard didn't sexualise his male students, if they were on their knees in front of him it was because he had forced you to submit through violence.

“Your brother thought so," Stiles said, finally raising his eyes to meet Gerard's, “just before I bit his fucking dick off.” Kanaima reacted, a flash of something before she schooled her face back to an impassive mask. Stiles' defiance was probably not spoken of in the Factory, just that he had betrayed them; that he had turned on them, that he was killing them one by one because he could. It was lies of course.

The Argents managed the Factory through fear, if the assistants learned that they were mortal, that they could be killed, the Factory would collapse. Stiles had killed Alexander Argent. They couldn't kill him for doing it, because then word of what he had done would spread, so instead they tried to break him, but as awful as the things that Kate had done were, and they were, he had not broken under her hands because he had learned something, that the Argents were only human and humans were moral and fallible and could die. He could kill them.

There was a moment of silence before Gerard spoke. “Do you tolerate him talking like that?” 

“Why wouldn't I?” he answered, “Stiles is my employee, not my slave.”

Again something flashed across Kanaima's face but she closed herself like a fan - with a snap.

“He was a very expensive employee," Gerard smirked.

“I was given away as a gratuity," Stiles said, “after the Assistant that Peter bought went mad, because you had engineered it." Derek showed nothing of his emotions as Peter said it. “Hale would have been perfect for your machinations, but Talia wouldn't have let it happen, so she had to go, so you promoted Violet, poor crazy Violet, who was so close to the other student, and then you told her that he was dead, that he had died because of the Hales, and she shattered, but she didn't do the job right, did she, Gerard, and you suddenly had a terrible liability, a student who knew just how fragile you were, one who could turn the tide, I was too dangerous to kill, certainly, but also too dangerous to let live. Who was it who solved the conundrum? Victoria? Kate? No, it was far too subtle for Kate, she always was Daddy’s blunt little instrument, oh if you wanted someone to hurt Kate was perfect, so it must have been Victoria. Gave me to Peter with a sword, let him take his revenge, after all, it's what you would have done.”

Gerard slammed the cup down on the table. “Are you going to let him talk for you, Hale? Are you his puppet, does he control you with his cock up your ass?”

Derek laughed as if Gerard had said something witty, “Stiles and I have sex, a lot, which is none of your business quite frankly, and I am not going to tell him to be quiet because he's not saying anything I disagree with. I was not going to give you a meeting for Hale Industries have no interest in any of your projects, we will not be offering you or your subsidiaries any funding. We will be speaking to companies that we are allied with to make it clear that we will not be trading with those that do trade with you. I only agreed to this meeting so Stiles could say to your face what he wanted to say. Are you done, Stiles?”

Stiles grinned, “yes, I am quite done.”

Both got to their feet with a practised fluidity, “you are of course free to finish your tea before you leave.”

“If I wanted proof you had poisoned the tea," Gerard snarled.

“Come now, old man," Stiles said in a sing song mocking voice, “as if I would be so gauche as to poison your tea.”

He held the door open for Derek and they were halfway down the corridor, out of ear shot of Gerard certainly, “I poisoned the sugar packets," he told him, “a powdered form of gastro-enteritis, not enough to kill a healthy man, but you never know.”

 

—

 

When Derek bought the piano it was out of an expectation that a New York apartment as large as his own would certainly have a grand piano, if nothing else to fill the space. It sat beside the wall of glass so that it formed a shield between the couch and anyone who managed to peep in to the fortieth floor.

Stiles had told him once that he had nightmares about people rappelling in through the windows, so Derek put a grand piano in their way.

He came out of the shower to the distinctive sound of someone playing the piano, there was muffled curses and bad notes so he knew that it was Stiles.

Stiles had told him once that his mom had taught him to play a few songs and then the Factory learning he had a marketable skill had forced him into lessons, so his love affair with music was based on his memories of his mother and his hatred of Debussy put in place by years of lessons where a cane was brought down on his forearms for bad notes.

Intellectually Derek knew that Stiles could play, but in all the years he had known him he had never seen it happen, even when he was threatening people he wouldn't think to simply finger walk along an exposed keyboard.

Now he sat, skin still covered in evidence of their lovemaking, and a towel down on the stool to prevent it being stained by the cum leaking out of his ass as he began to play.

Derek just leaned in the doorway, unsure of whether Stiles could see him, and rubbed the towel into his hair to dry it.

Once he got more confident he began to sing, but it was clear that he couldn't really remember the words, but every time he stopped, he took a deep breath and tried again, but this time he tried another song, instead of the distinctive introduction to Rocket Man, he started another song, one he knew better.

“ _Blue jean baby, L.A. lady, seamstress for the band pretty eyed, pirate smile, you'll marry a music man, Ballerina, you must have seen her dancing in the sand, and now she's in me, always with me, tiny dancer in my hand."_ His fingering was nervous at first but the more he played the more confident he became, he was picking at the song, avoiding some of the more complicated chords.

“ _But oh how it feels so real lying here with no one near only you and you can hear me when I say softly, slowly, hold me closer, tiny dancer count the headlights on the highway lay me down in sheets of linen you had a busy day today.”_

Derek walked over behind him, wrapping his arms around him. He had never been able to sneak up on Stiles, it was part of what he loved about him. He sat on the bench next to him, and reached out to turn the page, leaning their heads together. “ _Hold me closer, tiny dancer,_ " Derek couldn’t hold a tune in a bucket, but Stiles didn't seem to care as he squawked along.

“Hey, D," Stiles turned to him, a grin on his face, and three moles on his cheek forming a triangle that was Derek's absolute favourite thing on this earth, “you know we’ll always have Elton John, right?”

“Yeah," he butted his shoulder up against Stiles, “as long as it's the good stuff, none of that Benny and the Jets, Circle of Life shit.”

“That’s it," Stiles says, “I need a divorce, I thought," he fakes a sniffle, “you promised we'd never speak of that period in his music, that it would always be Goodbye Yellow Brick Road with an exception for Sacrifice and nothing else.”

"Isn't Benny” Derek begins but Stiles cuts him off with a LALALALALA! To drown out what Derek is saying. “And the jets on Goodbye Yellow Brick Road?”

Stiles is laughing and framed by the wall of glass behind him, he has never been so beautiful, and Derek has never felt so loved.


End file.
